What a day! Early in the morning I organized the car (thermos with tea, my co-pilot Jumbo got a map, some sweets, water, ...) and I started exploring the south of Illinois all along the ROUTE 66. The first stop today was Springville! The hometown of Abraham Lincoln (this year the town will celebrate the 200th birthay of the star of this town) and capital of Illinois is as expected: clean and a lot of old, renovated buildings - no high risers to be found and Lincoln you can find in every corner (where he worked, sat, slept, stood, ..)!! Nice for a walk and after 200 miles in the car highly welcomed.
Interesting was on top there that I didn't find any evidence of the Simpsons - I expected everywhere hints but I couldn't find a single one. You know: the family Simpson is living in Springville but it is unclear which Springfield - I heard recently that 5 towns in the USA are convinced that they are THE springfield. By the way: all the small houses and gardens outside downtown and the atmosphere ... I could imagine that the role model for the hometown of the Simpsons is this town (a famous capital city, the background of Lincoln, ...).
Before I left the town my co-pilot was keen on getting some hot dogs (an elephant :-)) and we found the famous COZY DOGS .... hotdogs wrapped in some corn crumbs on a stick ... interesting but more than that was that the shop is located in an old Route 66 museum ...
The rest of the travel today until I reached St. Louis was not exciting - the landscape until now is a little bit boring but it will get better on the rest of the route. In St. Louis it started raining but nevertheless I wanted to find a cosy, nice place for dinner with maybe some music and what happened to me??? I found around the campus of the university (excellent area!) a lot of excellent looking theaters and bars and restaurants and I found the JAZZ BISTRO. Sounded nice and I wanted to see if they by chance have some live music or at least a nice dinner for me and what happened - no guide showed that before: Dr. Lonnie Smith, organ (I saw him 2 years ago together with Lou Donaldson in Istanbul) will play together with Herlin Riley and Russell Malone (well known as guitarist from several CDs of Diana Krall). I rushed in, got my ticket, a table in the second row and was for 80 minutes on cloud 5 (higher ranks are reserved for THE girl :-)). Great music, difficult to describe: The organ pushed the other musicians in a partly wild and funky way and it was simply great!!! (latest CD Dr. Lonnie Smith: Rise UP! ... I have it now!!)
What a wonderful end of a heavy rainy evening... couldn't been better. By the way: in St. Louis they have the largest brewery in the world: Budweiser!!! but I found out that no one - at least in the club - is drinking that beer (as also my local table friends confirmed). If you come to St. Louis drink Schlafly brand beer ... really tasty.
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